I am a practising artist, and this is my blog. Here, I post about my own art and things art related, as well as general life, from time to time.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Art, Creativity, and Value

Good day, Blogger world!

Just this past week, someone stole 2 large, black and white photoprints from the Assumption Life Art Gallery in Moncton, or more specifically from Aleksandr "Sasha" Onyshchenko, the artist whose photos said gallery was exhibiting. More info here:

One wonders at the motivations of this thief, whether profit or kleptomania. Knowing how hard it can be to sell art that ISN'T stolen, it's hard to say, though these particular photos really are breathtaking. Either way, there is a very bitter irony about the whole thing from an artist's perspective.

Art isn't one of those fields you get into because you want to get rich. It's considered impractical, and in fact it's one of those areas of study that people refer to when speaking of college students with unrealistic expectations - and yet it is one of those things that gets taken for granted every day.

A great deal of creativity goes into the world we live in. One might consider advertising, to start out. You might think we don't pay for the images and other creative elements of advertising, but they are the reason that sites like Youtube and Facebook are free for us to use.

It occurs to me that one reason the arts tend to be undervalued is that creative people never really stop making creative works. We might make less, and it might be of lesser quality, but to actually stop creating is something we are profoundly unwilling to do. Whether it's paintings, photographs, or Gifs the content always appears one way or another.

Knowing this makes me grateful to all the grant programs and people who support the arts out there. Because people do realize that, even though you can't eat a painting or cure AIDS with a photograph, art and creative works are things we need in our lives.